23/08/2026
A beautiful piece by Pat, written in 2017.
THE FIRST TIME I EVER MET A FAMOUS WRITER
From time to time I would see a very old man,
tall and curved forward
the way you might see a tree at the ocean’s edge
bent over for all time by the weight of the wind.
He would be walking very slowly past the village green,
his wife and his walking stick making him complete.
One day my father said to me “Do you see that man?
Well, he’s a famous writer.”
Suddenly my eyes were wide open.
Famous. A writer. That was the very last thing
I expected to hear.
To me, writers were unattainable, far away,
distant, mysterious people
whose names were lined up on the shelves of our library
and that would be as close as any of them might get
to our village where the bread arrived from Dublin daily
in a horse-drawn van and the express train to Belfast
hurtled through in each direction twice a day.
And that was about it.
“His name is George Montgomery” said my father.
“But he uses the pen name – Lynn C. Doyle.
Do you get it? Linseed oil?!” And he laughed.
I didn’t get it at all.
But I couldn’t take my eyes off the curved old man in the distance.
“He has written a series of humorous books
set in the fictitious village of Ballygullion.
I’m sure that you will see them in the library.
I crept into the grown-ups’ section
where I was not supposed to be
and I looked and looked until very suddenly
my legs became weak because there before me
was a book with the name Lynn C. Doyle
and the title The Ballygullion Bus
printed in gold letters on the spine.
My father regularly wrote radio drama
for the BBC in London and Radio Eireann.
My father contributed feature articles
and short stories in Irish and English
to the national dailies.
My father won cead duais, gearr-sceal,
two years in a row in Oirechteas na hEiraeann.
But that was my father.
This was different.
This was a book.
This was a famous writer.
This was in the library.
There was only one thing to be done.
I would have to get this great man’s autograph.
Even though he certainly did not live like the rest of us,
down in the heart of the old village,
it was child’s play to find out where his front door was
because everybody in Malahide knew everything about everyone.
So off I went, up The Hill, towards the big houses,
set back from the road, up the steep steps
with my heart in my mouth
and my autograph book and pen in my hand.
Standing on tip-toe I reached up and pressed the bell,
resisting the temptation to abandon my mission
and leg it back down to the village.
After a good while, I heard somebody coming,
very slowly the front door opened
and there curved forward, looking down at me
was the great man himself.
I tried to speak but words would not come
so I held up my autograph book and my pen.
George Montgomery, pen-name Lynn C. Doyle
took it in his hand and very carefully wrote his name for me.
And then looking down again
and seeing what to him was a delivery boy,
he waited for me to hand over the groceries.
PAT, February 2017
illustration by Marina Guryanov
